AM Cassandre, the master of French art deco posters, made some icons for L’Étoile du Nord, Le Transatlantique, Dubo-Dubon-Dubonnet and dozens of other companies and campaigns. For many of his posters he also devised custom letters and some full alphabets. The French type foundry Deberny & Peignot commissioned him to design several display typefaces (Bifur and Acier) and a display/text typeface (Peignot). For each typeface, D&P published a promotional brochure aimed at printers and professionals—pieces that were comparatively lavish and today rare. Pascal Béjean, a principal of Art Book Magazine, recently published Cassandre Specimens online. “The ambition behind this publication is to fill this inexplicable gap,” he told me. “As a bonus, documents from the time show the design of these typefaces in context.” See the video here.
Cassandre Specimens is currently available for iPad on the free app Art Book Magazine. For other devices, get the epub version available here for $4.99.
Enter Print’s 2016 RDA today—Early Bird Deadline is Feb. 5!
